Wouldn't taxing uninhabited homes be more realistic and effective than banning people from owning things? If the tax hurts enough, then the prices drop so that uninhabited homes get people living in them.
Property tax is already kind of this: you have to pay tax on property owned regardless of whether you are putting it to productive use or not, so it pushes people to using property productively. China mostly lacks a property tax, so that is why property speculation over there is so bad (much worse than here in the USA). In China, it isn't worth renting your $1 million apartment for $1000/month, and doing so would only hurt resale value anyways (renovations are always redone by new owners, so renovating to support a tenant is a straight sunk cost).
If the vacancy rates are too low for a vacancy tax to have an impact, then the other dial to turn would be creating more supply via higher density zoning, yes?
I think this is the best solution. Should be for commercial property too. I've seen buildings be unoccupied for over 15 years, how can that be in anyone's best interest?
Often because lowering the rent lowers the value of the property which was based on its expected rental return. 15 years is quite extreme but it would often be preferable to go a few years without commercial tenants than to lower the rent and wipe out massive amounts of value.
Agreed. Expected rental return is a perfectly valid way to assess the value of a building but I feel that having vacancies should detract from the value in a way you'd rather keep it occupied all the time.
It should. But it sounds like there's an artificial valuation being propped up by not considering long stretches of vacancies. Of course, this only benefits people who own the properties...
I think most people would be fine with people owning one vacation home or cabin but would find more than that excessive. An alternative would be looking at local housing demand and taxing according to local need of housing, but that would be pretty messy and prone to loopholes and corruption.
There are areas of the UK where local property taxes and other financial incentives (some form of zoning I think) to reduce the number of holiday homes. The problem is that local people are being priced out of the areas by holiday homes. And in rural areas that impacts the viability of schools (lower pupil numbers so higher costs per pupil), public transport, even local grocery store viability (less trade out of season, no workers).
